Leadership Talk by the Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights

IrwinCotler Leadership Talk by the Chair of the Raoul WallenbergCentre forHuman Rights The fight against antisemitism is part of alargercommon cause that bringsus together—the struggle against racism, against hate,against antisemitism, against massatrocity,and against the crime whose name we should even shud- der to mention, namelygenocide. And mostly, and here Ireference my mentor and teacher Elie Wiesel, against indifference and inaction in the face of injustice and antisemitism;and all this is part of the largerstruggle for justice, for peace, and human rights in our time.¹ As it happens, the conference “An End to Antisemitism!” took place at an importantmoment of remembrance and reminder of bearing witness and taking action.Ittook place in the aftermath of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, remindingofhorrors tooterrible to be believed but not too terrible to have happened. Of the Holocaust,asElie Wiesel would remind us again and again; of awar against the Jews in which “not all victims wereJews, but all Jews werevictims.”² The conference “An End to Antisemitism!” also took place on the seventieth anniversary year,moving towards both the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Genocide Convention was called the “Never-Again-Convention,” but after it,genocidehas occurred again and again. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, being the Magna Charter of the UN,asformer UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said, “emergesfrom the ashes of the Holocaust intended to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”³ Both bears thatreminder today, that aUNthat fails to be at the forefront at of the struggle against antisemitism and other forms of racism, deniesits history and undermines its future. The conference “An End to Antisemitism!” also took place in the aftermath of the seventieth-third anniversary of the liberation of the death camp Oświęcim, Cf. E. Wiesel, “The Perils of Indifference,” speech deliveredApril 12, 1999,Washington, D.C. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ewieselperilsofindifference.html (last accessed January 14,2019). E. Wiesel, “President’sCommission on the Holocaust: Report to the President,” September 27, 1979,reprinted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, June 2005 (https:// www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20050707-presidents-commission-holocaust.pdf, last accessed January 16,2019), iii. United Nations, “Preamble,” Charter of the UnitedNations (http://www.un.org/en/sections/ un-charter/preamble/index.html, last accessed January 16,2019) OpenAccess. ©2019 Irwin Cotler,published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618594-011 62 Irwin Cotler which, as Holocaust survivorNoah Klieger summarized so succinctly, is “the largest cemetery in the world without graves.”⁴ From 1942tothe beginning of 1945, 1.3million people weredeportedtoAuschwitz, 1.1million of them were Jews. These1.1 million Jews were murdered in Auschwitz because of antisemitism. When Auschwitz was liberated, antisemitism itself did not die. It remains the bloodied and often mutated canary in the mine shaft of global evil today. In this context of remembrance and reminder,Iwant to expresssome thoughts, some concerns, some reflections,and some proposals as to what can be done regardingassaults on the Jewish condition and the human condition, regarding assaults on Jews and assaults on human rights, regarding the state of Jews in the world todayand the state of human rights as well as the state of the world inhabited by Jews. One cannot reallyseparate, if Ican use the term here, the intersectionality of escalatingglobal antisemitism, on the one hand, and escalatingglobalterrorism, and in particularterrorism targeting Jews on the other. Antisemitism is not onlythe oldest and most enduringofha- treds but also the most lethal.Antisemitism is aparadigm of radical hatred, as the holocaust is aparadigm of radical evil. It is “alethal obsession,” as the late Robert Wistrich put it in his magisterial work on antisemitism.⁵ ANew Antisemitism The underlying thesis of my remarks is that we are witnessing and indeed have been witnessingfor some time anew global, escalating,sophisticated, virulent, and even lethal antisemitism, that is grounded in classicalantisemitismbut dis- tinguishable from it.This new form of global antisemitism found its first institu- tional,juridical, and international expression in the “Zionismasracism” United Nations resolution of 1975,⁶ but has gone dramaticallybeyond that. The US am- bassador to the United Nations at the time,DanielMoynihan, described this 1975 N. Klieger,quoted in “Der grösste jüdische Friedhof der Welt,” St.Galler Tagblatt,January 27, 2015 (https://www.tagblatt.ch/international/der-groesste-juedische-friedhof-der-welt-ld.929901). Cf. R. Wistrich, ALethal Obsession: Anti-semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2010). The United Nations General AssemblyResolution 3379,adopted in 1975,determines that “Zionism is aform of racism and racial discrimination.” In 1991, this determination was revoked followingIsrael’sclaim of revocation of this statement as the condition of its participation in the Madrid PeaceConference. Cf. United Nations General AssemblyResolution 3379 (XXX): Elimina- tion of all forms of racial discrimination, 10 November 1975 (https://web.archive.org/web/ 20121206052903/http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/761C1063530766A7052566 A2005B74D1, last accessed January 14,2019). LeadershipTalks 63 resolution rightlyas“the abomination of antisemitism” and as “the appearance of international legal sanction.”⁷ Forthis new antisemitism, anew vocabulary is needed to define it.This can best be achieved in aset of metrics anchored in human rights and international lawconceptualizationingeneral and in equalityrights and equality lawinpar- ticular.The IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism which addresses both the old and the new formsofantisemitism does exactlywhat is needed.⁸ Traditional antisemitism is adiscrimination against denial of assault upon the rights of Jews to live as equal members in whatever state or society they inhabit.New antisemitism is adiscrimination against denial of assault upon the right of the Jewish people and the State of Israel to live as an equal member of the family of Nations. The Anti-DefamationLeagueglobal survey of 2014 demonstrates the impor- tance of my approach. This ADL survey anchorsitself in eleven of the classical metricsbyposing the questions “Do the Jews have had too much power?,” “Do the Jews control the economy?,” etc. etc. It determined that antisemitism was apersistent and pervasive virus.⁹ Isuggest that if we do not take the new metrics into consideration, we may come to arather disturbing outcomeand not fullyappreciate what is happening. The example of Sweden demonstrates what Iamaiming at.Applying the old metrics, the 2014 ADL global survey identifies only4percent of Sweden’spopu- lation as antisemitic. But if—considering the new metrics—youask aquestion like “How manyofyou believe, thatIsrael is acting in the same wayasthe Nazis did?” it goes up to about 40 percent.One has to look thus at the issue of antisemitism bothinterms of the traditional metrics and in terms of anew set of metrics, which Iwilldiscuss in this contribution. Let me try to put this in context by referencing Per Ahlmark. Ahlmarkisa formerdeputy prime minister of Sweden and one of the great leaders in the struggle against antisemitism. In appreciatingthe interaction of old and new antisemitism, Ahlmark argued that discrimination against Jews would moveinex- orablytodiscrimination against and assault on the Jewishnation state in Israel. From discriminating and assaultingthe state of Israel it would move again back to assaults on Jews themselves. Ahlmark concluded,and Iquote, “in the past, D. Moynihan, “Response to United Nations Resolution 3379,” speech delivered10November 1975. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/danielpatrickmoynihanun3379.htm (last accessed January 14,2019). Cf. “WorkingDefinition of Antisemitism,” International Holocaust RemembranceAlliance, July 19,2018, https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/news-archive/working-definition-anti semitism. Cf. ADL Global 100 Survey 2014,http://global100.adl.org/ (last accessed January 14,2019). 64 Irwin Cotler the most dangerous antisemites were those who wanted to make the world judenrein,freeofJews. Today, the most dangerous antisemites might be those who want to make the world judenstaatrein,free of aJewishstate.”¹⁰ Five Metricsofthe New Antisemitism Before Igointo detail, Iwould liketosummarize five metrics of the new antisemitism. These are (1) genocidal antisemitism,(2) demonological antisemitism,(3) political antisemitism,(4) anti-Jewishterror,and finally, (5) the one thatisthe most sophisticated and perhaps maybe the most dangerous,because the others are at least overt and publicand clear.But the one thatIwould call the launder- ing or the masking of antisemitism under universal public values,under our shared and common humanityisinmyview the most pernicious and prejudicial, and in that sense, threatening aspect of new antisemitism. GenocidalAntisemitism as the First MetricofAntisemitism The first metric of the new antisemitism Iwould call genocidal antisemitism. This is not atermthat Iuse lightlyoreasily. It is aterm that Iamtaking right out of the Genocide Convention’s “Cumulative Conviction against the Direct and Public

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